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Sunday, 20 January 2013

Titanic rant...

The Staircase is not for Plebs.

I visited the Titanic exhibition in Belfast a couple of weeks ago. I really enjoyed it, but there was one thing that rankled me. Access to the whole exhibition wasn't given. In fact the main piece, after paying for (quite expensive) tickets, was not part of the visit...

The Titanic was built by ordinary workers. None of the men and women who built the original staircase would ever have expected to be able to walk down it cloaked and gowned for a meal in the original Titanic's restaurant.

After the sinking when the class system meant the last people to be rescued were the poor spud grower in third class, and after the decimation of working class families during the first world war, when manys a flax gatherer or weaver or spud grower's son died a horrible death when ordered to push over the top ahead of the inspecting officer class etc, our society rid itself of preferential treatment for money. In the past few years this class system has creeped back with the disgusting language and policies of Cameron's government and the compliant press. How far down the line will the "skivers" be thrown to the front in whatever corporation war for other peoples resources..? I diverge...

Basically my complaint to the otherwise excellent Belfast Titanic exhibition is this... The new staircase was built by ordinary men and women. I suspect none of those who wove the carpet or nailed the boards down were millionaires or even rich people. I wonder how many of them, if they have families, will ever be able to afford a family visit those stairs? According to the guides we spoke to, the only way to visit was to pay for a cream tea on Sunday-£25 a head... £75 for my family- about as much as I pay for tickets to come over from Glasgow to visit my family in Northern Ireland in the first place. Titanic visitors centre... sort out your class system. The very system your exhibition states was called into question after the sinking...